Author Author

This will be the last Author Author post. As of today, our new site, The Book Studio, has launched. 

It’s all good news, really! Author Author was a blog-with-benefits; The Book Studio is a true destination, including search capability, Twitter feeds, and all-new author interview videos.

I’d like to take a moment to tell you about those videos. Our previous interview setup was produced in a Flash studio, meaning we had just one camera. Our new videos, like this one with bestselling thriller author Linda Fairstein, are taped on a fully staffed set, the same one where Gwen Ifill tapes “Washington Week.” The WETA Studio crew deserves a big shout-out for making our brand-new videos a success — thank you to Charlies, Mary Frances, Glenda, Matt, Dar, Deborah, and many others (please forgive me for not knowing everyone’s names) for all of the work you do.

I’d also like to take a moment before we say good-bye to Author, Author! and thank my team: the WETA.org Office of Digital Media (Pam, Mark, Jess, Elizabeth), WETA supporters (including, but not limited to, Joe, Polly, Dalton, Mary, Mary Kay, Anne, and Michael), and Suzanne, my tireless and committed and supersmart talent booker and associate. You all, as they say, ROCK. I’m privileged to be able to work with you on this new iteration of our project.

All of our Author Author videos will be available here: http://www.thebookstudio.com/video, so you won’t have to say goodbye to our original content — just the old name!

I look forward to welcoming all of our previous readers to The Book Studio. As always, we welcome your comments, suggestions, and feedback of all kinds. Thank you for helping us to keep book content and media alive here at WETA.org!

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Yes, according to various pundits, blogs are So 2005. Or even So Over. I say nay. I don’t think blogs are dead, but blogs are changing — just like everything else in the media. 

It used to be that a “web log” (for those who still don’t know that that’s where the word “blog” comes from; believe me, there are more of you than you think, and there’s no shame in not knowing!) was one person’s ramblings (at AOL, they began as “AOL Journals,” for example). It was a functional form, meant to allow a web user to capture their daily ramblings online. Early blogs — from those that quickly died natural deaths on to those that still exist today, like the hugely popular Dooce — were about one person’s voice and consciousness. 

The good ones (the aforementioned Dooce; wish she would write more and fiddle with her design less for example) work like neverending stories. Perhaps a better comparison would be to serialized novels in the Dickensian vein, or early radio soap operas. What will So-and-so do next? Did that really happen? What a great anecdote! Etc.

Group blogs came along circa 2006 (Weblogs Inc., with its popular Slashfood, was early in the game, although of course Gawker had been making progress in that vein already), and quickly became like fun little tabloids, filled with specialized departments, recurring features, and lots and lots of photos. IMHO, the Gawker Empire sites were much better in their older format, where some spots got more real estate than others. The diversity made my click-finger itchy. Now I just scroll past everything.

But a funny thing happened on the way to O’Reilly Conferences. People started to realize something that I’d realized in 2006, when I started the first Blogging Book Club: Blogs are a terrific way to form, shepherd, and grow community. Most devoted blog readers will now tell you that the Comments sections on popular sites like The Huffington Post and Jezebel are more entertaining and informative than the posts they follow. 

Of course, this was when the collective Internets got their collective knickers in a twist about Web 2.0. For those of you who have never heard that term (and why innocent civilians, as opposed to web programmers, should know it is not clear), “Web 2.0″ refers to community-generated content. In other words, the hoi polloi are storming the bastions of the press! 

Thank goodness. I’ve talked often about how everyone needs an editor, and I believe that (NB to my colleagues: Anyone want to edit me? Please?). But that doesn’t mean there aren’t ways to corral user-generated content so that it’s clear which sections of a site (or blog) are edited by “professionals” (read: Someone who has a stake in the advertising and promotion) and which are contributed to by “amateurs” (read: people who are often much smarter than the “professionals”). 

Tomorrow: What’s Next? Web 3.0?

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Good morning, all! We’re this much closer to the launch of The Book Studio. 

To keep myself out of trouble until the new site is live, I’ve decided to try something Completely Different for a giveaway. I’ve got just three copies of Dara Horn’s new novel All Other Nights available, but instead of having you just leave comments here, I’m going to have you take a walk on the Twitter side if you’d like to nab one of those copies.

The three books will go to three random responses from the first 30 to send me a “tweet.” I certainly understand if you aren’t interested in signing up for Twitter, and I’ll have plenty of “regular” giveaways coming up in the next couple of weeks for my loyal readers. This one is Twitter-specific, however. 

My Twitter “handle” is thebookmaven, and you can find me here: http://www.twitter.com/thebookmaven. Just send me a message (a “tweet”) saying you’d like a chance at All Other Nights. 

Thanks for trying out something new with me!

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Long-time readers can skip most of this post if they like… I’ve been blogging as “The Book Maven” since August 2004, when my then-boss at AOL asked me to start a blog and choose a name for it. At the time, the book of the moment was Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point, in which he talks about different kinds of people (e.g., “connectors”) including “mavens.” When this site becomes The Book Studio next week, I’ll still be The Book Maven here, on my more personal blog, and maybe somewhere else, too (must keep you guessing!).

I liked the concept, but I also loved the word. It’s Yiddish, and means (as I’ve mentioned in the past) both “expert” and “freak.” It makes sense. After all, the more specialized one’s knowledge in a single area, the more one tends toward freakishness. In a good way. A bookseller once described me as “the self-titled Book Maven,” which I suppose was meant to be disparaging. How dare I deem myself an “expert?” 

I was thinking more of the “freak” side, you see, when I chose that moniker. 

One of my regular blog entries in all of the places I’ve blogged has been to ask readers “What’s on your nightstand?” I can’t stop it now. As my daughters (AKA “The Mini Mavens”) squawk whenever we try to skip a stop on our annual Cape Cod vacation: “It’s a tradition!” 

Of course, there are new ways to ask people what they’re reading, now. I can ask on Facebook, and this morning, I asked on Twitter and got a slew of replies from the early-morning tweeple (I’ll have to “re-tweet” my question later, for the office Twitterers). But on Twitter, at least, responses are severely limited. I thought I’d ask here, so that anyone can leave a list as long as they like of the book stacks by their beds. 

What’s on your nightstand? I really want to know, as much now as I did nearly five years ago.

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In less than a week, we’ll be unveiling some very, very big changes here at Author, Author! — so big that the site won’t be called Author, Author! anymore! 

You might want to set a new bookmark for www.thebookstudio.com, currently a “Coming Soon!” placeholder screen. 

This blog will be a big part of the new site, but we’ll also have brand-new author videos produced on a new set. I’m really excited about them; they look terrific. It’s also completely searchable by genre, author name, title…I hope it will make your reading life a little richer. 

The anticipation is killing me. I wish I could show off the new site now, now, now. But the people doing the heavy lifting still have some modules to push into place, and they’re working very hard on getting everything just right. 

Please be patient, and please: Watch This Space. Good things ahead!

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Many, many years ago, when I was in high school, I went on an interview to be an exchange student and the committee members couldn’t stop exclaiming about how I looked like “a young Sally Field.” 

I no longer look like a young or old Sally Field (that woman’s got good bones), or even a young Bethanne — but I still have a lot in common with Ms. Fields. Remember when she exclaimed during her 1985K Oscar acceptance “You like me! You really like me!”? Everyone razzed her for that overeager and vulnerable outburst.

Not I. I understand! Sometimes you are so unsure of whether or not anyone’s paying attention that you can’t help breaking open and letting your tattered self-esteem slip show. You’re never supposed to let anyone see you sweat, right? Well, that may work for business meetings, but when you’re in a creative line of work, it’s not the same.

So yesterday when I received a book and a handwritten note from a publicist saying “I thought your Amy Dickinson video interview was FABULOUS, and wondered if you’d like to do the same kind of thing for Author X,” I was thrilled. I don’t get many comments on the author interviews that I post (and really, why would you leave lots of them? The interviews speak for themselves most of the time). To know that someone had watched, had liked it (really liked it!), and wanted a repeat performance for another author? That’s my measure of success, Web metrics be damned. 

So thank you, really thank you, to everyone out there who is watching. I’ll be doing more Flip video interviews with authors once my fractured leg has healed, and if any publicists out there have candidates for those, please let us know. You can always email me: thebookmaven at gmail dot com. 

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Today concludes my fourth full week on Twitter, the social-networking crack du jour. Its round-the-clock quality was partially summed up by one pal’s plaintive tweet last night: “Does anybody here ever go to sleep?” I don’t think anyone answered her; they were too busy trying to catch up on the last one hundred tweets or so.

I could go into various aspects of Twitiquette and what I find most useful about Twitter, but I don’t want to bore you all — I won’t do that unless you ask me. I will continue to bring you LitTwits, however, because this is the fastest, easiest, and most efficient way of finding out which stories are getting my Twitter “flock” of book/publishing folks talking (or tweeting). 

This week’s still-worthy LitTwits:

A new Bat Segundo podcast with Author Catherine M. Valente – @drmabuse

Just when you thought the Kindle 2 was all that, here comes Kindle 3 — @sarahw

Obama’s favorite theologian, Niebuhr, discussed on NPR — @yalepress

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Remember, you can always follow me: @thebookmaven on Twitter.

Here is some of this week’s news that was “tweeted” by my “tweeps” on my new beloved social-networking tool:

Which will win: Strip and Knit With Style, or Baboon Metaphysics? (from @sarahw)

“I try to forbid myself from using the word authenticity because I don’t actually know what the hell it is” (from @idtheory)

Cock-a-doodle-doo! It’s the Tournament of Books! (from @readerville)

Here’s why I love Twitter: Besides getting the above and plenty of other links to book news, I had tweetversations with a couple of author pals, found out what several of my favorite fellow bloggers are reading, and kept up on book events around the country. If I want to add info from more tweeple about cooking, travel, photography, politics, knitting…I can! But I don’t have to…and by self-curating a good Twitter list, I know that I won’t waste my time with tweets about “Going to the supermarket” or “The copier broke, again.” 

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I have a bit of a special relationship with the Virginia Festival of the Book, because I earned my master’s degree in English at the University of Virginia and lived in beautiful Charlottesville for five years of my life in all. VA Book is an annual opportunity to head down to “C’Ville” for a few days when it’s not overrun by garden-seeking tourists and hang out with some of the nicest people in the book world (yours truly not necessarily included, but they let me attend, anyway). 

This year I’m not only one of the Official Festival Bloggers — I’m on two different panels. I’ll be on this one as a panelist (although I may not fulfill the title) and this one as moderator (can’t wait; should be very well attended, as usual). 

I’ll be blogging more about the Festival, as well as linking to my fellow bloggers and perhaps even posting some of our Tweets in a Special LitTwits post from time to time…(remember, they’re not the LitTwits; the news posts are!). Are any readers out there planning to attend this year’s VA Book Festival? What local literary festivals, wherever you may be, do you attend?

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As most of us in Washington, DC, know, yesterday was the final print edition of our beloved Washington Post “Book World” review supplement. 

No one can be happy that this section is gone. Or can we?

First of all, let’s not be caught up in the idea that the section’s pages have disappeared due to lack of advertising dollars. As Motoko Rich noted in this NYT piece, advertising dollars were never what kept newspaper specials afloat, anyway. What did keep Book World afloat for many years was the support of Don Graham; perhaps Marcus Brauchle has decided to do the same thing, only in a different form: online.

This may not please folks who preferred to recline with print rather than with a laptop, and I understand that. We’re not yet to the point where e-reading devices mimick the ease and ergonomics of bending, folding, and mashing newsprint pages to our liking. As reader after reader has noted in blog comments and news story comments about the change in Book World, people looked forward to curling up with the section each week and learning about books they wanted to read, books they might never read but needed to know about, and commentary on the literary life.

All of these things will still be available in the new, Web-based universe of Book World. To me, here’s the rub: We all realize it’s easier for us right now to read printed, easily flipped pages. We want our newsprint, and we find it easier to drink coffee while we’re holding a newspaper section in our hand than when we’re tapping away at a keyboard (be that keyboard on a laptop, a Kindle, or an iPhone).

If we really, truly, madly, and deeply care about Book World — or any other book coverage — will we follow it down the cyberpath? Because as far as I’m concerned, nothing will kill off thoughtful, smart, timely, and lively book coverage than everyone abandoning it as soon as its familiar form changes. 

If you love The Washington Post Book World, keep reading it — and other book coverage — online. Who knows? You might even become adept, as I already am, at drinking coffee at the same time, too.

Disagree with me! Tell me I’m crazy. Or describe your own struggle with this transition. We’re all in this together, or we won’t get to hear about books at all — that, my friends, would be the real tragedy.

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